Michael Forman, the Coroner’s Officer, stood beside her, observing carefully and occasionally making notes, or checking his BlackBerry. David Browne, the Crime Scene Manager, was in attendance, along with two of his SOCOs. One of them, the forensic photographer, James Gartrell, was once more taking photographs of every stage of the post-mortem, while the other was dealing with the packaging in which the two corpses had arrived. At the next table along, Cleo and Darren were tidying up Unknown Male 2, suturing the incision once more.
Every time you thought you had seen it all, Roy Grace mused, some new horror would surprise you. He had read about people in Turkey and South America who got talking to beautiful women in bars and then woke up hours later in bathtubs full of ice, with sutured incisions down one side of their body and missing a kidney. But until now he had dismissed such stories as urban myths. And he knew the importance of never jumping to conclusions.
But three young people at the bottom of the sea with their vital organs professionally removed . . .
The press would have a field day. The citizens of Brighton and Hove would be worried when this news came out, and he already had two – as yet unreturned – urgent messages on his mobile phone to call the Argus reporter, Kevin Spinella. He would need to orchestrate the press carefully, to maximize public response in helping to identify the bodies, without causing any undue distress. But equally, he knew that the best way to grab the public’s attention was with a sensational headline.
Press conferences were not popular at weekends, so he could buy himself some time until Monday. But he was going to have to throw a few titbits to Spinella – and as a starting point the Argus, with its wide local circulation, could be the most helpful in the short term.
So what was he going to tell him? And, equally importantly, what was he going to conceal? He had long learned that in any murder inquiry you always tried to hold back some information that would be known only to the killer. That helped you eliminate time-waster phone calls.
For the moment, he put the press out of his mind, concentrating on what he could learn from the three bodies recovered so far. In his notebook, he jotted down Ritual killings? and ringed the words.
Yes, a very definite possibility.
Could they possibly have been organ donors who had all wanted to be buried at sea? Too unlikely to be considered seriously at this stage.
A serial killer? But why would he – or she – bother with the careful suturing after removal of the organs? To put the police off the scent? Possible. Not to be dismissed at this stage.
Organ trafficking?
Occam’s razor he wrote next, as the thought suddenly came into his mind. Occam was a fourteenth-century philosopher monk who used the analogy of taking a razor-sharp knife to cut away everything but the most obvious explanation. That, Brother Occam believed, was where the truth usually lay. Grace was inclined to agree with him.
Grace’s favourite fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, held to the dictum: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
He looked at Glenn Branson, who was standing in a corner of the room with a worried expression on his face, talking on his mobile phone. It would do him good to have a challenge, Grace thought. Something to get his teeth into and distract him from all his nightmarish legal problems with Ari, who, privately, Grace had never liked.
Walking over to him, and waiting for him to finish a call, Grace said, ‘I need you to do something. I need you to find out everything you can about the world of trafficking in human organs.’
‘Need a new liver, do you, old-timer? I’m not surprised.’
‘Yeah, yeah, very funny. Get Norman Potting to help you. He’s good at researching obscure stuff.’
‘Dirty Pretty Things!’ Branson said. ‘See that movie?’
Grace shook his head.
‘That was about illegal immigrants selling kidneys in a seedy hotel in London.’
Suddenly he had the Detective Superintendent’s attention. ‘Really? Tell me more.’
‘Roy!’ Nadiuska called out. ‘Look, this is interesting!’
Grace, followed by Glenn Branson, walked over to the corpse and stared down at the tiny tattoo she was pointing to. He frowned.
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
He turned to Glenn Branson. The DS shrugged and then, stating the obvious, said, ‘It’s not English.’
37
Romeo clambered down the steel ladder, holding a huge grocery bag under one arm. Valeria was sitting on her old mattress, leaning against the concrete wall, rocking her sleeping baby. Tracy Chapman was singing ‘Fast Car’ yet again. Again. Again. The fucking song was starting to drive him crazy.
He noticed three strangers, in their mid-teens, on the floor, slouched against the wall opposite Valeria. They were just sitting there, looking strung out on Aurolac. The tell-tale squat plastic bottle with its broken white seal and the yellow and red label bearing the words LAC Bronze Argintiu lay on the floor in front of them. The rank smell of this place hit him, as it did each time, and with particular force now in contrast to the fresh, windy, rainy air outside. The mustiness, the fetid body smells, dirty clothes and the soiled-nappy stench of the baby.
‘Food!’ he announced breezily. ‘I got some money and I bought amazing food!’
Only Valeria reacted. Her big, sad eyes rolled towards him, like two marbles that had run out of momentum. ‘Who gave you money?’
‘It was a charity. They give money to street people like us!’
She shrugged her shoulders, uninterested. ‘People who give you money always want something back.’
He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, not this person. She was beautiful, you know? Beautiful inside!’ Then he walked over to her and opened up the bag for her to inspect the contents. ‘Look, I bought you stuff for the baby!’
Valeria dug her hand in and pulled out a tin of condensed milk. ‘I’m worried about Simona,’ she said, turning it around and reading the label. ‘She hasn’t moved all day. She just cries.’
Romeo walked over and squatted down beside Simona, putting an arm around her. ‘I bought you chocolate,’ he said. ‘Your favourite. Dark chocolate!’
She was silent for some moments and then she sniffed. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’
She said nothing.
He pulled out a bar and put it under her nose. ‘Why? Because I want you to have something nice, that’s why.’
‘I want to die. That would be nice.’
‘You said yesterday you wanted to go to England. Wouldn’t that be nicer?’
‘That’s a dream,’ she said, staring bleakly ahead. ‘Dreams don’t come true, not for people like us.’
‘I met someone today. She can take us to England. Would you like to meet her?’
‘Why? Why would she take us to England?’
‘Charity!’ he replied brightly. ‘She has a charity to help street people. I told her about us. She can get us jobs in England!’
‘Yeah, sure, as erotic dancers?’
‘Any kind of jobs we want. Bars. Cleaning rooms in hotels. Anything.’
‘Is she like the man I met at the station?’
‘No, she is a nice lady. She is kind.’
Simona said nothing. More tears trickled down her cheeks.
‘We can’t stay like this. Is that what you want, to stay like this for all our lives?’
‘I don’t want to be hurt any more.’
‘Can’t you trust me, Simona? Can’t you?’
‘What is trust?’
‘We’ve seen England on television. In the papers. It’s a good country. We could have an apartment in England! We could have a new life there!’
She started crying. ‘I don’t want a new life any more. I want to die. Finish. It would be easier.’
‘She’s coming by tomorrow. Will you at least meet her, talk to her?’
‘Why would anybody wa
nt to help us, Romeo?’ she asked. ‘We’re nothing.’
‘Because there are some good people in the world.’
‘Is that what you believe?’ she asked bleakly.
‘Yes.’
He unwrapped the chocolate bar and broke off a section, holding it in front of her. ‘Look. She gave me money for food, for treats. She’s a good person.’
‘I thought the man at the railway station was a good person.’
‘Can you imagine being in England? In London? We could live in an apartment in London. Making good money! Away from all this shit! Maybe we’ll see rock stars there. I’ve heard that a lot of them live in London!’
‘The whole world is shit,’ she replied.
‘Please, Simona, at least come and meet her tomorrow.’
She raised a hand and took the chocolate.
‘Do you really want to spend another winter down here?’ he asked.
‘At least we are warm here.’
‘You don’t want to go to London because it is warm here? Right? How great is that? Maybe it’s warm in London too.’
‘Go fuck yourself!’
He grinned. She was perking up. ‘Valeria wants to come too.’
‘With the baby?’
‘Sure, why not?’
‘She’s coming tomorrow, this woman?’
‘Yes.’
Simona bit one square off the chocolate strip. It tasted good. So good she ate the whole bar.
38
Roy Grace stood on the touchline of the football pitch, beneath the glare of the floodlights, and jammed his gloveless hands deep into his raincoat pockets, shivering in the biting wind high up here in Whitehawk. At least the rain had stopped and there was a clear, starry sky. It felt cold enough for a frost.
It was the Friday night football league and tonight the Crew Club’s teenagers were playing against a team from the police. He had just made the last ten minutes of the game, in time to see the police being hammered 3–0.
The city of Brighton and Hove straddled several low hills and Whitehawk sprawled over one of the highest. A council development of terraced and semi-detached houses, and low- and high-rise blocks of flats, built in the 1920s to replace the slums occupying the land before, Whitehawk had long – and somewhat unjustly – held a dark reputation for violence and crime. A few of its warrens of streets, many with fabulous views across the city and the sea, were inhabited and dominated by some of the city’s roughest crime families, and their reputation infected everyone’s on the estate.
But during the past few years a carefully run community initiative supported by Sussex Police had radically changed that. At its heart was the Crew Club, sponsored by local industry to the tune of £2 million. The club boasted a smart, ultra-modern and funky-looking centre that could have been designed by Le Corbusier, which housed a range of facilities for local youngsters, including a well-equipped computer room, a music recording studio, a video studio, a spacious party room, meeting rooms and, in the grounds surrounding it, numerous sports facilities.
The club was a success because it had been created by passion, not by bureaucrats. It was a place where local kids did actually want to go and hang out. It was cool. And at its heart were a couple of Whitehawk residents, Darren and Lorraine Snow, whose vision it had been and whose energy drove it.
Both wrapped up in coats, scarves and hats so that their faces were almost invisible, they flanked Roy Grace now, along with a handful of parents and a few police colleagues. It was the first time Grace had visited, and, in his capacity as president of the Police Rugby Team, he was mentally sizing up the opportunities for a rugby challenge here. They were tough and plucky, the youngsters on that pitch, and he was quite amused to see them giving the force players a hard time.
A group thundered past, jostling, grunting and cussing, and the ball rolled over the line. Instantly the ref’s whistle blew.
But Grace’s focus was distracted by the post-mortems he had attended today, and yesterday, and the task that lay in front of him. Pulling out his pocket memo pad, he jotted down some thoughts, gripping his pen with almost numb fingers.
Suddenly there was a ragged cheer and he looked up, momentarily confused. A goal had been scored. But by which side?
From the cheers and the comments, he worked out it was the Crew Club team. The score was now 4–0.
Privately he smiled again. The Sussex Police team were being coached by retired Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor, who was an accredited football referee. As well as being a personal friend. He looked forward to ribbing him after the game.
He looked up at the stars for a moment and his thoughts suddenly flashed back to his childhood. His father had had a small telescope on a tripod and spent many hours studying the sky, often encouraging Roy to look as well. Grace’s favourite had been the rings of Saturn, and at one time he could have distinguished all the constellations, but the Plough was the only one he recognized easily now. He needed to re-educate himself, he decided, so that one day he could pass on that same knowledge – and passion – to his child. Although, he wondered wryly, would it again be mostly forgotten in time?
Then his focus went back to the inquiry. Unknown Males 1 and 2 and Unknown Female.
Three bodies. Each short of the same vital organs. Each of them teenagers. Just one possible clue to their identity: a badly executed tattoo on the upper left forearm of the dead young woman. A name perhaps . . .
One that meant nothing to him. But one that, he sensed, held the clue to all their identities.
Had they come from Brighton? If not, from where? He wrote down on his pad: Coastguard report. Drifting?
They could not have drifted far with those weights attached. In his own mind he was sure their proximity to Brighton made it likely that the three teenagers had died in England.
What was happening? Was there a monster at large in Brighton who killed people and stole their organs?
Experienced surgeon, he wrote down, echoing Nadiuska De Sancha’s assessment.
He looked up for a moment again at the stars in the night sky, then back at the floodlit pitch. Tania Whitlock’s Specialist Search Unit had scanned the area and not found any more bodies. So far.
But the English Channel was a big place.
39
‘You know, Jim,’ Vlad Cosmescu said, ‘it’s a very big place, the English Channel, no?’
Jim Towers, bound head to foot in duct tape once again, including his mouth, was only able to communicate with his captor via his eyes. He lay on the hard fibreglass deck of the prow cabin of the Scoob-Eee and was further concealed from anyone who might have looked down into the boat from the quay by a tarpaulin which smelled faintly of someone’s vomit.
Cosmescu, his feet in tall gumboots, steered the boat out of the mouth of Shoreham Harbour and into the open sea, a little concerned at the size of the swell. The northerly wind was stronger out here than he had realized and the sea much choppier. He sat on the plastic seat, his navigation lights on, making sure he appeared to the coastguard, and to anyone else who might be watching, just like any other fishing boat heading out for a night’s sport.
Wrinkling his nose at the smell of diesel exhaust being blown forward by the wind, he watched the illuminated compass swinging in its binnacle, steering a 160-degree course that he reckoned should take him out into mid-Channel, well away from the dredge area which he had carefully memorized from the chart.
A mobile phone rang, a very muted warbling sound. For an instant the Romanian thought it was from somewhere under the decking; then he realized it must be in one of the retired PI’s pockets. After several rings it stopped.
Towers just looked up at him, with the inert eyes of a beached fish.
‘It’s probably OK to speak now. Not too many people around to hear you,’ Cosmescu said.
He cut the throttle, stepped down into the cabin and tore the duct tape from the other man’s mouth.
Towers gasped in agony. It felt as if half his fa
ce had been ripped away.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s my wedding anniversary today.’
‘You should have told me that sooner. I’d have got you a card,’ Cosmescu said, with only the faintest trace of humour. He stepped back quickly to the wheel.
‘You didn’t give me a chance to warn you. My wife’s going to be worried. She was expecting me back. She’ll have contacted the coastguard and the police by now. That would have been her ringing.’
As if on cue, the phone beeped twice, indicating a message.
‘Is that so?’ Cosmescu said breezily, not giving away his concern at this unexpected news. He kept an eye on the riding lights of a fishing boat some way off, and on the lights of a big ship out in the distance heading east. ‘In that case we will have to be quick! So, tell me what you have to say!’
‘I made a mistake,’ Towers said. ‘A mistake, OK? I screwed up.’
‘A mistake?’
Cosmescu dug in his pockets and pulled out a Silk Cut. Cupping his hands over his gold lighter, he lit it, inhaled deeply and then exhaled the smoke down at the man.
The sweet smell tantalized the former PI. ‘Could I cadge one, please?’
Cosmescu shook his head. ‘Smoking is very bad for your health.’ He took another deep drag. ‘And you have a law in England now, don’t you? Smoking is banned in the workplace. This is your workplace.’
He blew more smoke down at the other man.
‘Mr Baker, I’m sure we can sort this out – you know – your grievance with me.’
‘Oh yes, we can,’ Cosmescu said, gripping the wheel tightly, as the boat ploughed through a big wave. ‘I agree with you.’